Theories of Value and the Good
Theories of value, or axiology, study what is good, what kinds of goodness there are, and what things have value, providing the account of the good on which normative theories of right action draw.
Definition
A theory of value is an account of what has goodness, of the bearers and kinds of value, and especially of final or intrinsic value, the value something has for its own sake, as opposed to instrumental value, the value something has as a means to what is good in itself.
Scope
This area covers the normative theory of value: the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value, substantive theories of well-being or what makes a life go well, the dispute between value monism and pluralism, and the relation between the good and the right. It supplies the evaluative foundations that consequentialist, deontological, and virtue theories presuppose.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What things are good in themselves, and what does it mean for something to have intrinsic value?
- What makes a person's life go well for that person?
- Is there a single ultimate value or an irreducible plurality of values?
- How are judgments of the good related to judgments of right action?
Key theories
- Non-naturalism about the good
- Moore's view that goodness is a simple, non-natural, indefinable property, and that attempts to define it in natural terms commit the naturalistic fallacy.
- Pluralism about intrinsic goods
- Ross's position that several distinct things, including pleasure, knowledge, virtue, and the just distribution of happiness, have intrinsic value, rather than a single good underlying all others.
History
Value theory was placed at the centre of analytic ethics by Moore (1903), whose open-question argument and naturalistic fallacy reshaped debate about the meaning of 'good.' Ross (1930) defended a pluralism of intrinsic goods, and later work by Parfit (1984) on well-being and by Korsgaard on the conditions of value refined the analysis of intrinsic and final value.
Debates
- Intrinsic value and the naturalistic fallacy
- Moore argued that goodness cannot be identified with any natural property; whether the open-question argument succeeds, and whether value is reducible to natural facts, remains disputed.
- Welfare and the value of a life
- Whether well-being consists in pleasure, desire-satisfaction, or the realization of objective goods bears on which lives count as going well and on what consequentialism should promote.
Key figures
- G. E. Moore
- W. D. Ross
- Derek Parfit
- Christine Korsgaard
Related topics
Seminal works
- moore1903
- ross1930
- parfit1984
Frequently asked questions
- What is axiology?
- Axiology is the philosophical study of value, including what things are good or bad and the nature of value itself; in normative ethics it provides the theory of the good that theories of right action draw upon.
- Why does value theory matter for normative ethics?
- Because consequentialism evaluates actions by the goodness of outcomes and other theories appeal to goods such as well-being and virtue, a theory of right action presupposes some account of what is valuable.